


The Scrying Glass

by BloodiedCrypt, orphan_account



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Choking, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Face-Fucking, Forced Orgasm, Hand Jobs, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Masturbation, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rape/Non-con Elements, Restraints, Sexual Violence, Tea, Tentacles, Wax Play, enemies to enemies with benefits, non-con starts in chapter 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2020-10-21 02:14:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20685800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodiedCrypt/pseuds/BloodiedCrypt, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Our worst enemies are the ones we have something in common with.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emet-Selch loves inviting himself places, regardless of whether or not it is a good time for company.
> 
> It was not a good time for company.

The interior of the Crystal Tower was as bright as Emet-Selch always remembered it, a cooler and less harsh light than the one without that bathed the world in perpetual sunlight. He stepped lightly out of his portal, boots clicking on the hard floor as he strolled into the Exarch's central chambers, intent on paying that mysterious man yet another visit -- hardly a fruitful endeavor, but one he enjoyed, as he so enjoyed even simple puzzles to pass the time.

Curiously, the Exarch visibly _jumped_ at the sound of Emet-Selch's footsteps, and he whipped himself around to face his uninvited guest. "Ah -- ah. Emet-Selch. I was not aware you ah, intended to visit," said the Exarch, embarrassment very nearly visibly rolling off him in waves.

"'Tis by design, I assure you. What..." Emet-Selch paused, pointedly leaning over and narrowing his eyes at the crystalline viewing screen behind the Exarch as the latter attempted, vainly, to position his body between it and the Ascian. "_What_ are you watching?"

Without waiting for the response, Emet-Selch closed the gap between them, brusquely pushing the Exarch aside with little resistance. Within the display the Warrior of Light lay supine on their bed in the Pendants, their clothing scattered around them like leaves in autumn, their legs spread and skin glistening with a fine sheen of sweat. Though the display conveyed no sound, the image was clear as day, the suggestive motion of their hands and the tense but expectant expression on their face leaving little room to guess at what they were about.

Slowly, Emet-Selch turned to the Exarch, surprise and incredulity melting into delight. "You wicked little voyeur," he hissed softly. A dark flush creeped down the Exarch's cheeks and throat as he shook his head rapidly. "I -- I can explain -- ah," he said, shoulders slumping in defeat. "Please don't tell anyone," he said with a pleading note to his voice, sending a little frisson of delight through Emet-Selch.

"Tell anyone?" said Emet-Selch in an unconvincing tone of mock-horror. "I would never. Besides," he said, sidling closer to the Exarch and setting his hands heavily on his shoulders. "Why ruin a perfectly good show?"

Abruptly, he tightened his grip and spun the Exarch around to face the lurid display on his scrying device. The Exarch stiffened, inhaling sharply as Emet-Selch snaked one arm around his torso, holding him in place with an impossibly strong grip. Slowly, he brought his free hand to his mouth and slowly, finger by finger, drew his glove off with his teeth, then slid his bare hand down the front of the Exarch's robes. _Fine fabric_, he thought distantly. _The man is no ascetic. Interesting._

"Tell me, _Exarch_," he hissed, brushing thoughtlessly against the hardness straining within the Exarch's robes as he groped for a part in the fabric, "What appeals to you so about our little hero?" As he spoke, the hero in question bucked against their hand, clearly enjoying whatever fantasy they happened to be entertaining at the moment. The Exarch released a little whimper as Emet-Selch found what he sought and plunged his hands into the robe, taking that rigid length -- yet yielding flesh, that was one mystery solved -- into his hand. Experimentally, gently, he squeezed, and the Exarch's hands flew up -- not, to Emet-Selch's surprise, to pry that invasive hand away, but to grasp onto the one encircling his shoulders in a bruising grip. The Exarch's hips rolled backwards as Emet-Selch pressed forward to meet the gesture, his own hardness grinding into the Exarch's lower back.

"They are--" he gasped, stuttering as Emet-Selch began, with agonizing slowness, to stroke him, pausing intermittently to gently squeeze and knead his balls. The Exarch said shakily, "They -- a, a hero, a beacon of hope, they are --" he swallowed, then whispered forcefully, "They are so beautiful."

Emet-Selch vocalized a quiet, noncommittal hmm, pale eyes shifting to the display where that hero lay splayed in their passion. "You aren't wrong," he said, a tinge of emotion that was not the cool disinterest he usually affected creeping into his voice. "They are magnificent, given what they are. I can hardly deny that. But," Emet-Selch's voice dropped abruptly to a snarl, his grip on the Exarch becoming so tight that he cried out softly and bucked against the hand that held him. "To spy on them in such a private moment. I may _indulge_ myself from time to time, but I expected better from _you_, oh paragon of virtue."

As he spoke, he went to work, and with deft, quick strokes he coaxed the Exarch closer and closer to his release, hips bucking against the hand of the man that held him in an iron grip and ground his own arousal against his back. For long minutes they fell silent, eyes fixed on the display before them where the Warrior of Light slowly, agonizingly coaxed themself to some kind of release, and the Exarch felt himself inching toward the same.

Then, just as abruptly as Emet-Selch had begun, he stopped.

The Exarch panted softly, groaning his frustration through clenched teeth as Emet-Selch released him. Behind him, he heard the rustle of fabric, and he turned to see Emet-Selch adjusting his own robes to free his cock, just as hard as the Exarch's. Those pale eyes shifted from the display to the shadows of the Exarch's hood, and though his face remained hidden, they each felt a warm and insistent heat pooling in their bellies as their eyes met.

Wordlessly, the Exarch sank to his knees, seizing Emet-Selch by the hips and pulling him in as he took the Ascian's cock into his mouth, muffling his own whimper against his rigid flesh. Through unspoken agreement, Emet-Selch did not touch the hood still concealing the Exarch's face, but instead cradled the back of his head through it, guiding the Exarch into a pleasing rhythm. Gradually, he met that rhythm with his own thrusting, and noted there was an unusual lack of give to his throat -- the crystal, it must be, he thought -- but the Exarch was so damned _accommodating_ for that, swallowing his cock without hesitation or struggle as Emet-Selch climbed closer and closer to the edge of release, eyes darting between the twin displays of sheer eroticism before him.

Beneath him, the Exarch took hold of his own length with one hand, stroking himself unsteadily, and Emet-Selch briefly entertained the idea of forbidding him -- but no, he was so close now, and doubted the Exarch could be coaxed into doing anything _truly_ entertaining by such a forbiddance, and his thoughts were becoming less clear now anyway, the Exarch was now kneading _his_ balls, and -- with a strangled cry, Emet-Selch's grip became crushingly strong as he ground himself into the Exarch's mouth, grunting through gritted teeth as he came, and it was not the Exarch he watched as he did.

The both of them breathless, Emet-Selch turned the Exarch around on his haunches, facing the display. Upon it, the Warrior's eyes snapped open, mouth open in a soundless moan, their face an exquisite paroxysm of pleasure as they found their release -- as did the Exarch, spilling himself upon the Tower's crystal floor with his own feeble cry.

Wordlessly, the both of them slowly caught their breath as the Warrior they watched relaxed, rested momentarily, then moved to clean themself up. Wordlessly, the Exarch got to his feet, legs wobbling beneath him. Wordlessly, they both tucked themselves back into their robes and delicately rearranged their clothing until they were something resembling respectable. Wordlessly, they both pointedly ignored the mess on the floor.

With a wave, the Exarch shut off the scrying display before them, staring into the middle distance for a moment before saying evenly, "I have tea."

"Ah," said Emet-Selch, sounding uncharacteristically caught off-guard. "Tea would be lovely."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is not a thing. They do not have a thing. It will never be a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For ForcedRedacted, even though she cheated.

The Crystal Exarch grudgingly admitted that Emet-Selch was not lying when when he said he was familiar with the Crystal Tower, though he had not anticipated what form that knowledge took.

From some cramped room in the upper floors, Emet-Selch had conjured an ancient, dusty sofa -- a _cabriole_, he insisted -- and positioned it in front of the scrying pane. Every time he left he would, with a touch of teleportation magic and a little assistance, carefully move the sofa back to its forgotten storage room, and when he arrived thence he would start their evening by dragging it back out again. Alongside it he would conjure small tables and even ancient dishes and cutlery of that classical, obtusely detailed Allagan design. Emet-Selch would take off his coats for a change and make himself comfortable, and though the Exarch never deigned to so much as unhood himself, he felt both challenged and encouraged enough to provide tea and modest snacks in the manner of a polite host. Thus they developed their routine: sit, eat, drink, take calculated jabs at one another, watch their mutual fascination engage in everything from napping to cooking to fighting, and then usually fuck.

Today, the show appeared to be candlemaking.

_How_ the vaunted Warrior of Light-cum-Darkness found the time for such a hobby was beyond Emet-Selch. He supposed this must qualify dimly as the rest between trials the other Scions had insisted they take, though one could hardly tell by the pace of their work.

"The Crystalline Mean has them assisting with some new styles of candle, as nobody is really used to it being dark at night yet and beeswax is still dear," the Exarch was saying. "They gave me a few of the leftovers actually. Thoughtful, if unnecessary."

"Those wicks," remarked Emet-Selch idly, still watching the glass, "are too short."

"What? They look fine," said the Exarch. "How can you even tell? The glass isn't that powerful."

"I can _tell_. Your inferior faculties are your own problem."

Emet-Selch heard the Exarch sigh next to him, the slow and deliberate sound of a man that realized he was being provoked into an argument and, to hell with it, was going to take the bait anyway.

"For someone with such _superior faculties_, you seem fond enough of my hospitality, not to mention my company."

"Your hospitality is not what I am principally fond of," said Emet-Selch primly.

With irritation shading his voice, the Exarch began, "It certainly can't be the host --"

"The host is _adequate_," interjected Emet-Selch, "though hardly the most entertaining thing worth beholding at the moment."

"For a man so contemptuous of what he has deemed pale shades of real people," said the Exarch, "you are curiously fixated on that one."

"And why not? They try so very, very hard. They might even succeed at what they are attempting to do, rendering all my carefully laid contingencies moot."

"Which are?"

Emet-Selch pointedly ignored this. "Now, fetch one of those candles," he whispered, leaning so closely to the Exarch that he could feel the heat of his breath. "And I will show my _host_, pale shade and all, a little appreciation. I would hate to be a boorish guest, after all."

The Exarch hesitated, and for a moment it looked as though he might refuse on some principle or another -- but no, he rose and left, slipping past that locked door into his personal chambers (and how Emet-Selch would love to see what he hid in there) and returning after a moment with one of the candles in hand. He sat and held it out to Emet-Selch, who took it.

It was a pillar perhaps six ilms high, smooth, unembellished, and utilitarian save for the color: the brightly saturated red of veinous blood. His vision _shifted_, and Emet-Selch could see a pale blue flicker of aether -- the shadow of its creator -- clinging to the wax, and he pursed his lips in distaste.

"Not bad," he said, affecting an air of _grudgingly impressed_. "I wonder how it burns though?"

As the Exarch opened his mouth to object, Emet-Selch snapped his fingers and the wick sparked and crackled into flame. The wax, clearly something a little softer than beeswax, melted swiftly. The light was reflected in Emet-Selch's eyes as he watched, turning that wintery gold into something closer to the molten hue of newly-minted coins.

With gentleness that immediately set the Exarch on edge, Emet-Selch took the wrist of his crystalline arm and stretched it out before him. "Are you completely insensate, here?" he asked softly, and without waiting for an answer, poured a line of molten wax down his forearm.

The Exarch flinched back, more out of old reflex than actual pain. "No," he murmured, the wax hardening almost instantly on the cold crystal. "Not entirely. But I don't feel very much. Some pressure, a little heat--" he hissed as Emet-Selch poured the wax onto his _wrist_, where it pooled and the heat built up and yes, there was the pain, a mere phantom of what it should be but present nonetheless. Emet-Selch's eyes never left the Exarch's face, though his own remained fixed in an expression of polite, detached amusement, concealing the acerbic stab of _want_ that flooded his veins.

"This would be easier if you would undress," he said, at once suggestive and perhaps a little pleading, not that he expected the Exarch to abruptly change his mind about being a cagey, mysterious little bastard.

"I think not."

"Pity. I might have to ruin your lovely robe, then." With a hard shove, Emet-Selch had the Exarch on his back on their little lounge and, balancing the candle expertly in one hand, moved to straddle the hips of the smaller man. He ran gloved fingers over the expanse of throat and collarbone the Exarch's robes left exposed, hand briefly encircling that throat though exerting no pressure as his thumb lingered on one of the places where crystal fused to flesh.

The Exarch stared up, expectant. "Feeling sentimental?"

Emet-Selch moued slightly, raised the candle, and yanked the collar of the robe down roughly. The Exarch had but a second to brace himself before a drizzle of molten wax fell upon his throat and shoulder, and a flash of searing pain radiated from where it touched his flesh, mingling with the barest echo of heat where it touched the crystal. He hissed through his teeth, back arched; Emet-Selch ground against his hips experimentally, the motion reciprocated even as the man's eyes kept drifting, damn him.

Emet-Selch watched those lips part, the realization creeping over him that despite their couplings, he had never actually kissed the man. Gently, he placed his gloved fingers under the Exarch's chin, his thumb pressing firmly against his lower lip. Need, warmly insistent, poured into him as he bent down, the sensation quenched as quickly as it came over him when two fingers, hard and icy, pressed against his lips and stopped him in his tracks.

"That is not what this is," hissed the Exarch, quiet but firm.

Emet-Selch's breath caught, and for the first time in a very long time indeed he was rendered temporarily speechless. He sat up slowly, the silence stretching to fill the space between them.

"Ah, I understand," he said finally, not bothering to keep the barbs out of his voice. "Wishing it was our little Hero hurting you instead?"

"As though you wouldn't gladly have them."

Emet-Selch smiled like a knife and lifted his shoulder in an affected little shrug. "You assume I haven't. You are not the only one that knows where their bed is, after all."

Gritting his teeth, the Exarch abruptly plucked the candle from Emet-Selch's fingers and shoved him to the side, sending him rolling off the lounge and landing on his back on the hard floor with a soft grunt. Setting the candle delicately aside, the Exarch leaned over him, forcing his legs apart as he yanked up Emet-Selch's robes until they were bunched up artlessly around his waist. "Twelve, what a ridiculous outfit," he muttered distractedly, and Emet-Selch raised an eyebrow thoughtfully in response but said nothing.

Emet-Selch's bare cock twitched in the cooler air of the chamber, and the Exarch took a small bottle from next to the lounge -- a gift from Emet-Selch, because they were enemies, he'd said, not savages -- and poured the glistening contents onto the tips of his crystalline fingers, spreading it until they were coated. Emet-Selch lifted his hips from the floor as, without preamble, the Exarch glided his fingers from the base of his cock, past and under until he reached the tight ring between Emet-Selch's legs and pressed until it gave way to him, and he gasped audibly from the cold of the oil and the crystal.

The Exarch settled into a slow and controlled rhythm, the crystal not taking any of the warmth from Emet-Selch's body in the slightest, remaining cool and unyielding. He slipped in a second and a third finger, each teasing forth a delicious, insistent, and slowly spreading heat from within him. When Emet-Selch attempted to remove his gloves, to touch himself and relieve that exquisitely building ache, the Exarch delivered a sharp, painful smack to the inside of his wrist. Emet-Selch jerked his hand back and did not try again, though his fingers twitched.

That cold warred with the heat in him, building slowly to that delicious, longed-for peak the Exarch seemed determined to never quite let him reach. He was almost _painfully_ hard, and increasingly desperate to do something about it, the need filling him, eating its way up his veins and eclipsing every other thought. He gasped, rocked his hips forward, bit back a low moan, and the Exarch leaned forward and whispered quietly, "Yes?"

Emet-Selch groaned, tilted his head back, and growled through clenched teeth, "Fuck me. _Please_."

The Exarch withdrew his fingers to hastily part his own robes and free his cock. Grasping his hips again and hauling them up, he sheathed himself in one swift thrust, his cock a scalding heat compared to the frigidity it replaced. They rocked desperate and urgent against one another, the Exarch taking Emet-Selch's length in his hand and stroking him roughly, his grip almost painfully tight.

Emet-Selch's breathing grew more ragged, his muscles tensing as he felt himself edging closer to his release. He shut his eyes briefly, a groan slipping from his lips, and he noticed the pace of the Exarch's rutting slow. When Emet-Selch opened his eyes, he saw the Exarch now held the still-lit candle over the bare skin of his stomach. With exaggerated care, he tilted it, and Emet-Selch watched the wax slowly bead on its edge and drip down the side, his skin tingling in anticipation before the wax ever struck him. It ran down the sides of his abdomen in molten crimson rivulets, quickly drying as the searing heat faded to a mere stinging warmth. The pain of it dragged him irresistibly to his peak, and he came with a ragged, gasping cry that filled that vaulted room.

He realized, the maddening fog over his thoughts clearing with distressing swiftness, that while the Exarch continued to fuck him he never so much glanced down. Always he remained fixed on that scrying glass and the unknowing figure in it, up to the very moment he snapped his hips hard and fast, emptying himself into Emet-Selch with a bitten-back cry. Only then did his gaze slide down to the man beneath him, lips pursed, mind only fractionally in the present, blowing out the candle and saying nothing.

* * *

The Scions gathered the next day in the Tower, Emet-Selch only half listening as they discussed lightwardens and strategy and all the little personal tragedies he wasn't particularly interested in, the Crystal Exarch delicately steering them to their next tasks and even more delicately parrying suspicious personal questions. Finally, they all turned and left; all but the Warrior.

"Exarch," said the Warrior, approaching him and reaching slowly toward his hood. The Exarch froze, rigid, as Emet-Selch watched in unblinking silence. From an exposed portion of the Exarch's crystalline throat the Warrior peeled a splatter of bright red wax, holding it up.

"Ah," said the Exarch shakily. "Y-yes. Thank you. Your candle -- I managed to splash myself with it by accident. Quite superb work though, thank you again."

The Warrior nodded, then turned to follow the Scions out. Their steps slowed briefly, and Emet-Selch noticed the Warrior staring at his hand for the span of a heartbeat, expression unreadable, before they continued on their way. It was only after the door had shut behind them that Emet-Selch glanced down and noticed the smear of wax, bright and red as blood, along the hem of his glove.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> emet-selch is a bottom and I will DIE ON THIS HILL


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein telling him to shut the fuck up only makes his opinions Worse.

Kholusia. Blighted, blisteringly bright Kholusia.

They had all acknowledged that yes, a Light-aspected Calamity was inevitably necessary, and yes, that meant someone had to deal with the actual _Light_ of it, personal aspect be damned. Sickeningly adorable a couple as Mitron and Loghrif were, Emet-Selch still regretted being right about his appraisal of them as _too clever by half_, and all the more their responsibility falling to him after their deaths. Pressed by necessity to inelegance and haste after a millennium of sweeping, patient plotting, everything moved at once intolerably fast and unbearably slow now for his tastes.

Too much. He had said too much to the Warrior. It was careless, it was pointless, it was _damned stupid_. True, the Warrior lacked the context to use what they now knew to any particularly deleterious end, but their uncertainty was a variable that was not under Emet-Selch's control and that awareness wormed its way into him like a thorn, thickening his blood with that poison called hope.

It was that creeping, sickly irritation that carried him to the Exarch. He was such a _good_ target for it, after all.

The Crystal Exarch hunched behind a boulder far and away from where the Scions flitted about, too pale even under the unnatural light. Emet-Selch's focus shifted until he could see that the man's aether, even considering the mutilated state its grafting to the Tower had left it in, was withered and drawn-in around itself.

Emet-Selch sank down next to him, close enough for their shoulders to touch. "You look dreadful," he said by way of greeting, and the Exarch snorted in reply.

"I'm sure if you bent your vast intellect to the challenge you would be capable of intuiting why."

"You're dangerously overextending yourself. Why choose now to get your hands dirty so very far from home?"

"This is the final push. The final Lightwarden. I would see it done, and all your hopes unmade ere nightfall."

Emet-Selch affected a noncommittal shrug. "Yes, yes, as you say. The great and terrible plans of the Ascians foiled." He paused, idly running a gloved fingertip along one of the smoothed crystalline facets of the Exarch's arm. "Well, fine. Don't tell me."

The Exarch canted his head to look up at Emet-Selch, the set of his mouth pensive within the shadows of his hood, an uncertain tension in the slant of his shoulders. Emet-Selch merely watched him in uncannily polite silence; finally, the Exarch turned away and thumped his head back against the boulder, closing his eyes with a tired sigh.

Emet-Selch hastily veiled himself from sight upon sensing a familiar soul approaching, positively relished the look on the Exarch's face when he opened them to find the Warrior standing over him instead. They spoke, gently, and he watched the conversation wander.

The Exarch was not of the First; whatever else, however else, he was a man of the Source and of that _particular_ bloodline Emet-Selch had quite thought extinct. It had become obvious to Emet-Selch between his control over the Tower, the way in which aether and flesh alike had been grafted to it, and his distinct turns of phrase. The Warrior had to know as well. They must. Emet-Selch cannot fathom the utility of this polite fiction, and veiled within his shadows, Emet-Selch was _bored_ by it.

So he reached out, brushing against the Exarch with aether and the shadow of touch, running insubstantial fingers along the Exarch's throat and down his back. He saw the man shiver yet continue to speak, a torrent of words spilling out of him, things that feel entirely too intimate for the audience he had. Whispers of fingertips traced the line of his jaw and followed the curve of his calf, accompanying flushed half-truths so earnest they edge dangerously close to genuine confession.

Alas, though, not close enough.

Finally, the Exarch bid the Warrior farewell, promised them he will meet them back in the village for their final push to Mount Gulg after just a brief rest, and as soon as the Warrior is out of earshot he snarled, "Show yourself, you rodent."

Emet-Selch obliged in a blossom of dark aether. "Whatever is the matter?" he said, affecting a wounded air in the face of the Exarch's irritation.

"Must you attempt to goad me in front of an audience, now?"

"Please. It isn't as though I physically inserted myself into you."

The Exarch slumped again against the face of the rock, lips pressed together. Emet-Selch idly observed the play of exhaustion limned with anger in his damaged aether. "You seemed to need it," he remarked lightly, "the way you seemed prepared to ravish them at any moment--"

The Exarch was upon him with uncanny speed, and the heavy crystal of his forearm pressed against Emet-Selch's throat. "Has anyone ever told you," he hissed quietly, "that you are entirely too fond of the sound of your own voice?"

"It has -- been mentioned in passing," he gasped with a ragged giggle. The Exarch pressed harder in response, and after a moment the edges of Emet-Selch's vision began to grow dark and hazy as a pleasant little frisson rippled through his flesh. Too late, he realized he had whimpered aloud, and the Exarch's mouth set into a cruel line.

The forearm was lifted only for that strong hand to take Emet-Selch by the shoulders and press him against face of the large rock. The Exarch rose to his knees, fumbling with the front of his robes and withdrawing his half-hard cock with one hand as the other tangled itself in Emet-Selch's hair.

Emet-Selch did not wait to be bid; he bent forward and took his cock into his mouth, hands stroking the Exarch's thighs through his robe.

"Yes, be silent," gasped the Exarch, jerking his hips forward. "Be silent for once in your accursed life."

Emet-Selch's muffled moan in response hung defiantly between them. He choked with the first thrusts, yet unprepared for that rapidly hardening length filling his mouth. His throat clenched, rebelled, his eyes stinging and watering as he fought to master himself.

He felt the Exarch's fingers tighten on the fistful of his hair, dragging him down until he was hilted and _holding_ him there, Emet-Selch drinking in the musky-sour scent of him and feeling his face grow hotter and his vision wavering again as he held his breath, wondering if the Exarch ever intended to _let_ him breathe again. Abruptly, the Exarch released him, and Emet-Selch reeled backwards gasping in momentary reprieve before the Exarch guided his mouth back down to his cock.

The Exarch did not show restraint now, fucking his mouth until Emet-Selch began gagging in earnest more than once, the wet choking noises barely muffled. Each time, he would withdraw and give him but a second to recover before plunging himself back in, and finally he felt the Exarch tense, hair pulled painfully taut as he ground himself against his mouth.

Emet-Selch's back arched and hands clutched at the Exarch's robes as his lungs burned for air. He could feel the Exarch's pulse against his tongue, the hot tears on his cheeks, the demanding ache between his legs, his awareness slowly constricting until the Exarch finally spent himself on his tongue, and the eruption was above all else bitter, bitter.

The Exarch withdrew, sat back on his haunches, and studied the ruin of the man panting for breath before him. Emet-Selch's hair was mussed and tangled, the cosmetics around his half-lidded eyes smeared and running as dark trails of tears stained his reddened cheeks, and saliva glistened on his lips and chin as well as both their robes.

It was _incredibly_ compelling.

Gently, the Exarch cupped Emet-Selch's cheek with a warm hand and ran the pad of his thumb over his lips. His lips parted slightly, and he bent his head to plant a kiss on the mound of the Exarch's thumb, unbidden, and was faintly surprised when the Exarch did not stop him.

Pressing his own lips together instead, the Exarch sighed and withdrew his hand after a moment, gingerly rearranging his robes -- there was nothing to be done for the mess but to hope it dried and that nobody noticed -- and rising to his feet with a wince.

"Back to it then?" asked Emet-Selch, more hoarse croak than usual drawl.

"They're expecting me," the Exarch said. "Perhaps...ah. It is no matter now. Goodbye, Emet-Selch."

Emet-Selch watched the Exarch go and wondered. He dimly thought it hardly mattered anyway.

After all, all his hopes would be unmade ere nightfall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has left kudos and especially comments, I have not replied much because I am a huge shy nerd but every time I get one I make incredibly undignified happy noises.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was never a thing. But it wasn't a different thing than he thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the tags/archive warnings because it only gets worse from here. Thank you friends. <3

Emet-Selch watched the Warrior of Light's soul breaking and his hope died stillborn in his breast. Now, tempered by the clarity of his purpose here, he considered his options.

He could simply let the Crystal Exarch -- G'raha Tia, he supposed -- go. He would die, of course, but _they_ would live. The plans of he and his brethren would come to naught -- but neither would the First become a Light-ridden void. New plans could be made, perhaps. All he had to do was choose not to intervene, to choose instead to wait.

Possibility contracted into one blinding, burning flash as he chose.

* * *

G'raha Tia awoke alone in a strange place.

His first thoughts, groggy and half-conscious, were that he had been shrunk somehow. The furnishings -- a pair of tables and a few chairs -- were massive, proportionate to the vault of the ceiling and the strange angular patterns laid into the marble floors and adorning each fixture. The room was windowless, illuminated instead by wall sconces shedding a pure colorless light that cast everything in surreal sterility.

He craned his neck to look down. Twining around his limbs and cradling his partly-supine body a few feet off the ground was a darkly vitreous crystalline substance. The light reflected off the black-and-purple lattices within as it twisted and grew in disquietingly organic ways over his limbs. The substance had a slight -- very slight -- give, but no amount of struggling could break it or force it to release him, and he gave up in short order.

As he struggled, he realized that the shock of pain there should have been was absent. No warm trickle of his life fleeing him, no tearing of flesh nor sharp scrape of bone on bone (he was both sure that bullet had shattered a rib on impact, and equally sure that Emet-Selch was a good enough shot to hit precisely where he meant to) and no more darkening of his vision as blood filled his lung and robbed him of his senses. All that remained was the dull ache of a wound that had been healing for some time.

How long had he been here? How long? _What happened to his Warrior?_

His fingers clenched and unclenched reflexively. Desperately, he reached for his magic, reached through his connection to the Crystal Tower -- and released a wild, desperate groan as it trickled through his fingers like water, siphoned away as quickly as he could call upon it. His binding stirred to life, glimmers of violet shifting within the substance, fading as G'raha ceased his efforts. He would not risk feeding whatever fell thing Emet-Selch had conjured with the Tower's strength. With his other options exhausted, that left waiting to see what Emet-Selch meant to do next.

He did not wait long.

* * *

Emet-Selch's heels clicked as he walked across the marble floor, palms up in an unconvincingly conciliatory gesture.

"Well well," he said, circling around the bindings to gaze down at G'raha. "Have a little of your vim and vigor back, I see. You've healed quite nicely. Not precisely my forte, you know. Lucky that body of yours is so very resilient."

"What have you done?" whispered G'raha, not meeting Emet-Selch's eyes.

"Saved your life. You're welcome, by the way."

"_What have you done?_"

Emet-Selch merely stared down at him a moment before sighing. "Your plan was foolish. It would have worked, but it was foolish all the same."

"As though that were -- I could have _saved them_!"

"I had thought you better than grand gestures of martyrdom, frankly," said Emet-Selch airily, "but I clearly failed to account for your inclinations to the dramatic and self-destructive."

"Oh, you hypocrite," spat G'raha. "If that is true, it must be like looking into a gods-damned mirror."

Emet-Selch affected a slight shrug, but G'raha pressed on, saying, "You may well be a monster but I _know_ you feel affection for them. I see how you look at them. And you'd consign them to that torment... for what?"

"I do," Emet-Selch admitted. "But my personal attachments needs must be set aside for the greater good of our endeavor, as it has ever been. Which is why you are now my guest indefinitely while I pick apart your modifications to my Tower, and _they_ will be completing their transformation from hero to beast in short order."

"It will not work," said G'raha, shaking his head. "You underestimate them as you ever have. You know that they will come to stop --"

"I told them," said Emet-Selch quietly.

G'raha froze, body and mind, a terrible growing mingling of dread and anger clutched at his throat, making his voice sound alien to his own ears, "Told them..?"

"About us. About you and your little hobby. Truly, they certainly seem to have suspected something already. But ah, you should have seen their face --"

"You _bastard_," snapped G'raha.

"And I am telling you this now," continued Emet-Selch as though G'raha had said nothing, "so you know that you have nothing to run to. They will not have you. Your would-be sacrifice will not be some grand, heroic gesture that elevates you to beloved. At best it would be atonement. But we know you're not really sorry, are you? Neither of us are men given to that kind of contrition."

G'raha fell silent, anger banking down to a numbing mingling of grief and shame that settled heavily into his chest. So they knew, he thought, barely registering fingers running through his hair as he wondered what he might be able to say, explanations he may be able to offer -- but no. There was no excuse, not really, and he realized it changed nothing; neither about what he must do nor the black chasm of _why_ he still refused even now to gaze into.

His ear twitched as Emet-Selch ran a finger along its edge, dragging his awareness back to the present. "There is no reason to sulk so," Emet-Selch purred. "This doesn't have to be unpleasant. If you're good I may even let you see them again before the end."

"Go away, Emet-Selch," said G'raha. He felt so very tired now.

"Would you like the bullet back?" he asked coyly. "I had to dig it out with my fingers, you know."

From G'raha's grief and shame arose a contemptuous gnarl of annoyance. Emet-Selch was flirting with him, going through the motions of their usual -- gods, how he loathed the both of them right now -- foreplay.

"You _shot me_," G'raha snarled acidly through bared teeth. "You've as good as condemned them to a fate we both know is worse than death, and the deaths of countless others thereby. Do you honestly think I want to fuck you now?"

"Do you honestly think you have a choice?" asked Emet-Selch mildly.

G'raha's mouth snapped shut as the reality of Emet-Selch's words washed over him, cold as seawater. "This is not -- I am not playacting. I am not doing -- doing _this_ with you anymore," he said, his own voice distant and unreal.

A pause. "You're right," said Emet-Selch, his voice dropping to a low whisper. "We are well past playacting."

Hands strong enough to shatter bone cradled G'raha's face, holding him immobile as Emet-Selch bent down to press his lips to G'raha's. G'raha released a muffled, disgusted cry, keeping his lips pressed together until Emet-Selch caught his lower lip with his teeth and bit down hard. G'raha's gasp of pain was involuntary, but it was enough -- Emet-Selch's tongue slid past the bound man's lips, hot and invasive and insistent. In the grip of his fury and indignity, G'raha bit down as well, tasted blood on his teeth as Emet-Selch inhaled sharply and, to G'raha's chagrin, pressed upon him ever more hungrily.

After what felt like an eternity, Emet-Selch released him and straightened from where he had bent over, a smear of blood clinging to his lips. Uncertainty or dissatisfaction -- G'raha could not tell which -- darkened Emet-Selch's expression, and they both breathed hard as Emet-Selch set his mouth into a thin line.

Affecting a languid air, Emet-Selch ran his hands over G'raha's chest before working to unhook the clasps and closures of his robes, breaking or tearing what would not open easily as piece by piece he disrobed him. G'raha squirmed and tried vainly to pull away, but the crystalline restraints held him as fast as ever and Emet-Selch seemed content to indulge him in his impotent struggling as he exposed more and more of G'raha's flesh. With perfunctory gestures, Emet-Selch then set to disrobing himself in turn, walking in a slow little circle as he plucked every flashy accessory and over-elaborate piece of finery from his own body, finally tossing his gloves onto G'raha's chest.

A halo of broken jewelry and crumpled clothing around them, Emet-Selch studied G'raha laid bare before him, face unreadable as he took in the fusion of flesh and crystal on the planes of his torso. G'raha's skin prickled as Emet-Selch traced that boundary, feeling the heat of his fingers, feeling his heartbeat quicken and praying silently that Emet-Selch could not tell even as the corner of the man's mouth twitched upward.

"I don't want this," G'raha said in a small voice.

Emet-Selch bent low, close enough that G'raha could feel his breath, and whispered, "I don't believe you."

A snap of the fingers and he held a bottle -- their bottle, from the Tower -- and casually upended the contents onto G'raha's soft cock before tossing the empty container aside. With a firm grip Emet-Selch took G'raha's length into his hands and began to work him to hardness with deft and skillful gestures. G'raha gritted his teeth against the insistent, demanding tension building between his legs despite the revulsion at the very notion of doing this again, not _again_, _never again_. His mind groped around for other things to focus on, but even the indignity and grief still settled over him like a mantle reminded him of only _them_, and the very idea of thinking about them now, after everything, had the raw tenderness of a canker in his mind which he shrank from.

G'raha tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling as he hardened in Emet-Selch's grasp. He felt a cold pressure constrict tightly around the base of his cock and suddenly Emet-Selch was astride him, the crystal restraints easily supporting the weight of the both of them. Emet-Selch leaned forward, bracing himself with one hand as the other groped behind him to line up G'raha's slick, hard length, G'raha muttering a plea of _please, don't_ that turned into a low groan as that tight, familiar heat enclosed him. Emet-Selch sucked in a quiet hiss through his teeth as he settled into place, a faint flush darkening his features as he watched G'raha sob raggedly.

Slowly, he brought his hand to G'raha's cheek, stroking away one tear with his thumb before G'raha jerked his head away with a wordless snarl. Seizing him roughly by the jaw, Emet-Selch bent down and dragged his tongue up the other tearstained cheek, leaving a red smear from his bloody tongue in its wake as his breath caught and he began to slowly rock his hips. G'raha writhed in vain defiance, of the man mounting him as much as the awful awareness of growing pleasure suffusing his traitorous flesh.

"Damn you, gods damn you!" he choked against the press of lips to his jaw. "Wasn't taking everything else enough? Wasn't taking _them_ enough!" Invectives poured out of G'raha in a furious stream -- _murderer, rapist, monster_ \-- before Emet-Selch picked up one of his gloves and shoved it roughly into G'raha's mouth.

"For a man that whines about my loquaciousness you yowl entirely too much for my tastes," he snarled.

His motions thereafter were needy, hungry, desperate in their roughness. Emet-Selch stroked the length of his own cock as he chased his pleasure, and he came quickly, teeth clenched, thrusting into his fist, painting G'raha's stomach and chest with his release. He delicately plucked the glove, now stained bloody, from G'raha's mouth, but the bound man now remained unmoving and silent beneath him. He snorted softly as he climbed off, G'raha's cock still throbbingly hard.

"Ask nicely," sneered Emet-Selch, lightly running a finger along G'raha's abused length "and I'll finish you off as well. It would be so very rude to leave you unfulfilled after all."

"Is that --" G'raha said softly, hesitantly, pointedly ignoring the demanding ache in his constricted, still-hard cock, "-- is that what this was? Revenge?"

A sharp inhalation, then: "No."

"Then what --" He paused; the question felt impossibly heavy, a lead coin on his tongue. "Why?" he finally managed.

Emet-Selch turned away and snapped his fingers again. The ring vanished and, though he remained painfully engorged, there was an immediate sense of relief G'raha met with a ragged gasp. Bending to pick up his clothing, Emet-Selch redressed himself with shaking hands. G'raha watched silently for a long moment before speaking.

"None of this has been about your grand plots or securing another offering on a bloody altar to your impotent god."

"Enough. I am finished."

"No. It's personal, it was always personal," pressed G'raha. "You came to me. You kept coming. You've dragged me here after making them into your next sacrifice. Why?"

"_You _are a fine one to lecture me about making people into sacrifices," whispered Emet-Selch harshly. "Or do you believe everyone left in your timeline on the Source lived happily ever after? You of _all people_ I expected to understand the price of making right a wrong done."

G'raha canted his head, releasing a little _hah_ despite himself. "It isn't about there being a price. It's that you aren't the one paying it," said G'raha, slowly. "We made sacrifices of ourselves, you are right. We all burned ourselves in effigy in the name of a different future, for all my life was to take a little longer to burn out. But you... you're a thief, thinking you can stack corpses all the way to the heavens."

"You know nothing," said Emet-Selch, avoiding meeting G'raha's gaze. "Nothing about Amaurot. Nothing about what was paid, what was lost. What it bought or what we will rebuild."

"Everything you have ever built or will ever build," said G'raha, leaden, "will only ever be another lonely, forgotten abattoir."

"_And so what_," snarled Emet-Selch, spinning to face G'raha. "You and yours are squatters in the tombs of your betters and I would rather _burn it down_ and write their names in your _ashes_ than suffer you and yours to exist another moment in mockery of them!"

There was a wound there, ragged and raw for all the eons Emet-Selch had borne it, and G'raha, torn between the kindness in his personality and the instincts of a predator, chose cruelty.

"Do you know what I think?" he said, affecting a lightness he didn't feel. "I think you were always a miserable bastard. Even during your halcyon Amaurot, I would wager you made sure everyone around you was as miserable as you were."

"Silence," hissed Emet-Selch. "You know _absolutely nothing_ about me, about my life, my loved ones, or our happiness."

"Happiness?" said G'raha, and he heard the incredulous laughter seeping into his voice even as he registered how deeply unwise it was to continue taunting his captor. "I know _you_, Emet-Selch. You have never been happy in your life. You don't even know what happiness is. All you know is 'pain' and 'no-pain' in some stilted understanding of survival."

The blow that followed was not a surprise, but still painful, and G'raha blinked back spots in his vision. Blood gleamed on the knuckles of Emet-Selch's hand as they glowered at one another, each boiling for reasons both different and more similar than either would care to admit.

Finally, Emet-Selch shrugged, stepped back, and waved his hand dismissively; at once, the substance restraining G'raha sublimated into shadowy vapor, and he landed hard on the marble floor.

G'raha sat there, stunned, uncertain.

"Well?" said Emet-Selch sharply with a sweeping gesture, a creeping heat washing over the room as the light shifted from pale sterility to a malign, flickering orange. "Get dressed, and I will show you what _burning in effigy_ looks like."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein several endings are witnessed.

Under the mute gaze of Emet-Selch, G'raha dressed himself with limbs heavy and stiff from confinement and grief. The heat in the room grew ever more stifling as the light shaded ever more to orange, and a deep intermittent rumbling vibrated beneath his feet.

Finally clothed, G'raha affected his straightest posture and stared back at Emet-Selch. "Well. What now."

Emet-Selch stepped towards G'raha, lips pressed into a thin line. G'raha stood resolute, refusing to give Emet-Selch the satisfaction of his fear even as the man brought his bloodstained gloved hand up to cradle the back of G'raha's neck, thumb pressed lightly against his jugular. 

"You are incapable of the barest conception of what was lost," he whispered, and a cool pressure slid around G'raha's throat, solidifying into a smooth collar of that strange violet crystal. He jerked away from Emet-Selch instinctively and at that moment, a loud and foreboding **_crack_** heralded part of the wall and ceiling collapsing, showering him in a cloud of dust and cloying smoke. He shielded his face and shouted in surprise, and when he dared open his eyes again Emet-Selch was gone.

Slowly, he approached the new egress as waves of heat and the indistinct sound of distant screams washed over him. The sky beyond was a dark canvas punctuated by slashes of fire that rained down on a vast city. Massive towers and delicate spirals punctuated the flame-limned firmament, and he watched that skyline burn, the sight of that ruin filling him with inexplicable sorrow.

"What is this?" he whispered.

"The end," murmured the voice of Emet-Selch, soft and low, next to his ear. G'raha whipped his head around but saw nothing as the voice continued, "The end of the world I called home, whose hollowed out corpse you all fester in."

Another quake rumbled beneath G'raha's feet, a threat and a promise. He glanced over the edge to see broken moldings that might serve as footholds, taking him down to a burning, soot-blackened street some stories below.

"Can you feel it?" that voice asked. "That great and terrible Light approaches. They should be here very soon."

What choice did he have?

He began to climb.

* * *

Buildings collapsed and burned among a chorus of distant screams, its source unseen. The ground quaked intermittently beneath G'raha and threw him more than once to his knees, showering him with dust and debris that clung to his sweat-soaked skin and added scrapes and bruises to what he already bore. Fire licked at his robes as he passed by sections of gutted buildings, and he threaded aimlessly down debris-strewn roads and ducked through alleys, aetheric senses groping half-blind for that familiar spark to orient himself with. Flickering shadows stalked him in the corners of his vision, a constant malefic presence pressing on his awareness and collecting into a sense of dreadful imminence whenever he dared to slow down. All the while, that voice followed him, a poisonous whisper dripping into his ears.

He did not know where he was precisely nor where he was going or how he might find the Warrior and escape the purgatory Emet-Selch had sent him to, but he kept moving because anything was better than that room and that man.

"We could have them together, if you like," drawled that voice, heavy with suggestion. "They should be quite controllable even while they're thrashing about."

"Don't you _dare_," snapped G'raha. "Don't you _dare_ even suggest I would violate them the same way you did me."

"That note is a little rich, coming from you," said that maddeningly mild voice. "Haven't you already violated them in a fashion? 'Twould hardly be an escalation from what you've already done."

"I've done _no such thing_!" said G'raha, and he winced inwardly at the pitch of his voice.

"No? You dragged them bodily from their home without so much as a by-your-leave, nearly killing them and all their friends in the process. You press-ganged Elidibus's pet into helping you lie to them, you spied on them, and you did all in your power to deprive them of the ability to make an informed choice at any point about their own life or destiny."

"Everything I have done, _every single thing_, has been for the purpose of saving their life and the lives of countless others, and I didn't have to resort to _genocide_ to do it."

"Yes, yes. That would explain all the spiced tea imported from Eulmore, the honey commandeered from that little outpost in Lakeland you like so much. The most noble of intentions."

"Do not," said G'raha through gritted teeth, "attempt to draw equivalence between the two of us."

"I'm sure you have plenty of charming justifications for everything you've done. Spying on them while they bathe as you beg me to bite your thigh a little harder, for example. Clearly necessary to _save their life_ in some fashion beyond my ability to comprehend."

G'raha's breath caught in his throat as he stumbled mid-stride. A low, chilly laugh echoed around him.

"Whatever other sins I might bear, I was honest with them," continued Emet-Selch. "I have ever strove to ensure the path they have trodden down was chosen of their own free will. You, however, took every miserable parcel of agency from them. And even if you do find them, _they now know it_."

G'raha swallowed against the spike of loathing in his breast. "I had no choice," he whispered.

Another laugh, soft and humorless. "You are a liar, G'raha Tia, and I no longer find your prevarications charming."

"You are utterly deluded," shot back G'raha as he impulsively turned down a debris-choked alley, a prickle of foreboding creeping up his spine. He ignored it. "All this theater and mummery for what? Is this jealousy? Are you angry I wouldn't kiss you, didn't give you my _affection_? Is that your excuse for being a monster far and beyond even the rest of your ilk?"

There was a pause, and then: "Let me show you," said Emet-Selch in a voice that had razors in it, "what I think of your _affection._"

G'raha's foot caught on something that sent him sprawling, landing hard on his forearms with a yelp. He glanced back to see that the thing he had tripped over was an outstretched arm, that the dark shapes strewn amid broken stones that he had taken for debris were bodies stacked like cordwood. They stared at him through white masks streaked with soot, blank-eyed and cast aside like broken dolls. Some twined together in embraces or held hands, others were frozen in rictuses of terror of whatever had slain them. Blood mingled with ash, and that sticky slurry seeped into the stones beneath him, soaking into his robes.

Shadow welled up around him and G'raha scrambled to his feet to flee only to be seized from behind by something that threw him with pitiful ease against one of the walls of the alley. He crumpled, stunned, and blinked dazedly; the light from distant fires was so dim he could only make out a silhouette that he recognized as Emet-Selch's -- until it wasn't, until glistening, fleshy tendrils had wound around G'raha's limbs, unyielding in their strength.

"Found you," said Emet-Selch, and his voice was a timbre and pitch that took more tongues and vocal chords than that mortal body possessed, and G'raha realized with a wild, hysterical thrill of terror how wrong he had been to treat the Ascian like a man, how foolish he was to have believed Emet-Selch's submission was anything but a condescension.

The appendages flipped G'raha onto his stomach, and seconds later cold metal dug into his scalp, pressing the side of his face into the ground as another hand yanked his robes up and over his hips. Another limb -- massive, impossibly strong -- wrenched his legs apart, holding him with a bruising grip. Something cold and slimy pressed against his entrance, and once it had penetrated him it seemed to pour into him, twisting to bloat and stretch him as the monstrosity mounting him loomed over his body and brought its weight to bear against him in a rough thrust.

He felt like he was being split apart, felt himself stretched and filled to the point of tearing as he tried to jerk his body away from the source of the pain until another hand pressed his right shoulder into the ground; the pressure exerted grew and grew until, with a gut-clenching _**pop**_, the crystal there cracked. G'raha screamed as indescribable pain shot through his body with the violent intensity of a broken bone, nausea welling up in him as he willed himself not to vomit. He felt sharp lines scraping up his shoulder and neck before two claw-tipped fingers were shoved into his mouth, the metal cold and sharp on his tongue. He sobbed and gagged.

Whatever the thing that was Emet-Selch had now that passed for a cock seemed to _curl_ within him, and despite himself G'raha felt a jolt of pleasure through the haze of pain that made his own cock twitch. Emet-Selch hummed in satisfaction, purring in tones that felt like a wool comb being raked over his soul, "Wail and gnash your teeth as much as you wish, but we both know how much pleasure you've been begging me to wring out of your malformed flesh."

G'raha was eye-level with one of those bodies, bathed in the reek of smoldering flesh. In the depths of the mask's eyeholes he could see the glassy sheen of an open eye and his awareness shrunk to the hint of a fixed pupil, the play of shadow and distant flames across a liquid surface that once belonged to whoever or whatever these people had been.

The hand on his head clenched, yanking his head up and back agonizingly by his hair and shaking him slightly, dragging his attention away from the edge of disassociation.

"No," that voice said, a rasp as intimate as a razor across the eye. "You stay with me this time."

Emet-Selch did not withdraw, did not pump into him but stayed hilted to the hip, that appendage writhing to apply a rhythmic and precise pressure instead. G'raha felt things cold and wet snaking up his legs, slick tendrils curling around his cock and balls and squeezing, almost delicately at first but slowly growing to uncomfortable levels of pressure. He was shamefully, agonizingly hard, awareness drawn irresistibly to the caress and ripples of Emet-Selch's flesh moving against his and how _good_ it felt.

He did not understand how he could enjoy it, loathed the flicker of disappointment when Emet-Selch slowed or shifted to remove touch from here, squeeze there, pulled ever more deeply from the well of pleasure he seemed intent on drawing dry. He _ached_ with such an intensity it was like he had been struck, and the ache grew ever more terrible as Emet-Selch applied a thousand little gestures intended to tease and draw G'raha to the precipice without ever allowing him to tip over it, an irresistible pressure building within him with no release promised or permitted. The pleasure ran aground of the pain, mingling, each heightening the other, and G'raha did not know which he despised more and wept.

G'raha did not know how long Emet-Selch held him against that edge. Every time he seemed to drift away, every time he attempted to curl up inside himself and block out what was happening, Emet-Selch would apply some new torment: another radiating spiderweb of cracks in the crystal of his arm or torso, a hard and bloody bite with teeth too long and too sharp to be human at the nape of his neck, a bloody gash made with gilded claws dangerously close to his eye. Emet-Selch made plain his desire for what G'raha had always denied him and G'raha was sure he would go mad from it, from red agony shading to black need, from the unrelenting and insistent pressure built up within him, from the tingling denial traced into his oversensitive skin; he was sure that this was Emet-Selch's design, the way he would finally break him.

He did not want to be broken. He wanted -- he wanted --

G'raha mouthed a handful of syllables around Emet-Selch's claws, muffled and incomprehensible. Emet-Selch withdrew his fingers and in nightmare tones projected a vivid imperative: "Say it."

"Please," gasped G'raha, "let me--"

Emet-Selch did not wait for him to finish. Hands slid up G'raha's back, and as Emet-Selch bent himself to his unraveling he grasped the back of the collar and yanked it tight against his throat. In moments, G'raha came in thick, copious torrents with an unthinkable intensity, sure for a moment Emet-Selch had plucked out his eyes now, so radiant was the pleasure of release. He was sure he must have screamed but could not tell for certain, could not hear anything past the brief commandeering of his senses, bent as they were to what he knew in his marrow was the most intense orgasm of his life. G'raha shuddered and gasped, his lungs on fire, barely registering as each tentacle withdrew from him, as he slumped forward nerveless and limp.

* * *

Sheathed in mortal flesh, Emet-Selch slouched onward, dragging ragged and barely-conscious G'raha by his collar behind him. His passing left a track in the layer of ash coating everything along with a smeared trail of blood.

"Fret not, my dear G'raha," he crooned softly, half to himself. "I shall attend to the Warrior next. Very, very soon."

* * *

A galaxy of tiny motes of light heralded the end of Emet-Selch, and G'raha watched and felt hollow.

The Warrior stood motionless and gazing at the ruined skyline for a very long time, even as the Scions bustled and worried about them. The Light had permanently blanched their short curly hair a stark white, but their skin had already returned to its normal hue of shaded honey. Smears of dark cosmetics ran down their cheeks and G'raha did not, could not, _would not_ think about what that reminded him of. Finally, limping slowly, G'raha Tia made his way forward, the Scions parting and drifting to let him through.

The Warrior canted their head in his direction but did not look at him. G'raha opened his mouth and froze; what could he possibly say?

"I --" he began, swallowing hard. "I owe you an explanation. I have made... several mistakes."

"Yeah," said the Warrior tonelessly. "I think I did too."

Without another word, they turned away and began walking, leaving G'raha to the broken horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, friends.
> 
> (I swear I don't hate that poor jolly rancher cat)


End file.
